Asian Tulips | Beautiful Flower For Your Life !

We’re talking about exhibition variety chrysanthemums (also called football and spider mums), those nine-to-twelve-inch-wide flowers you mainly see in florist arrangements, or at chrysanthemum shows.

McLeod grows 250 chrysanthemums, representing 61 varieties. He’s a species of gardener with a strong passion for one group of plants. But why chrysanthemums?

“Partly, when I was a kid, these are the flowers I remember. And there’s not too much blooming this late (in autumn), and they last for two months in their pots,” he says.

McLeod grew up in Scotland, and speaks with the enchanting music of his birth country. Tall and ruddy, with white hair, he looks like he just stepped off the heather moors.

A retired math professor, he was looking for a useful project. He lives near Courtyard Village retirement community and drove past it often. A lightbulb went off–he would offer to teach others how to propagate and nurture chrysanthemums.

“Growing chrysanthemums means messing with things nine months a year. I was thinking of this as an activity,” he says. “Some of the residents were keen gardeners before they moved here.”

You take cuttings from the mother plants in March, and from that time until fall flowering there are many tasks. He pictured sharing the process with interested seniors as a fun way to bring them together.

In October 2008 McLeod took chrysanthemums in full bloom to the residence to see if anyone was interested.

“There was more enthusiasm than I expected,” he says. He held a meeting in December, and in February 2009 fifteen residents launched the project. A core group of eight remain, and I met with three of the women and McLeod at Courtyard Village to learn more.

“We call it a club,” says Pat Hershey. She not only grows the chrysanthemums but shares them with her neighbors, and also photographs them.

“We were not that well acquainted at first–180 people live here. Robin brought in big pots and we’d sit around the table and take cuttings,” Hershey adds.

Cuttings dipped in rooting hormone are set in seed trays filled with damp sterile potting soil. The trays are covered with plastic domes that stand about seven inches tall, like mini-greenhouses. It takes a month for roots to develop. McLeod keeps his trays in the basement, while the women use their windowsills.

It’s tempting to lift the dome and check the cuttings.

“I couldn’t help but look at them all the time and peek,” Helen Cooper admitted. “I’d take the lid off and water them a little.”

“I learned to leave them alone,” says Hershey.

Walking through Tsukuba`s old neighborhoods in October and November, you will very likely see some impressive chrysanthemums (kiku) displayed out by the front doors of homes and shops, their big, heavy looking yellow, white or pink blossoms  sitting atop their slender leaf laden stems, often supported  by round metal frames.  You will  often find prize winning MUMS on display and even shows of chrysanthemum SCULPTURE ( kiku ningyo) throughout this season at venues such as shrines and parks.

Though they are NOT a native species, KIKU have not only come to be known as one of Japan`s two important representative flowers of autumn ( the other being HAGI- bush clover), but they have also become the symbol of Japan`s Imperial Family, and institition which in English is in fact often referred to as the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Believed by the ancient Chinese to possess special medicinal powers, specificallythe ability to cleanse one of spiritual impurities and providing ETERNAL YOUTH, there is evidence suggesting that chysanthemums were introduced to Japan as early as the 5th century. There are,  however, NO references to this flower in the first ( and perhaps greatest) of Japan`s poetry anthologies, the Manyoshu ( compiled in the 8th century).In the Nara (710-794) and Heian (794- 1185) Periods the aristocrats of the Japanese Court adopted the Tang Chinese custom of drinking chrysanthemum wine and rubbing ones body with cotton swabs soaked with chrysanthemum dew on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month( for the Chinese, odd numbers are YANG- bright and positive. Nine is the highest odd numeral ,which would make 9/9 the luckiest day of the year- right when the mums were in bloom). This event was officially called the choyo no sekku （重陽の節句), one of the five seasonal change days which the Japanese took on from China. These customs are described by Sei Shonagon in her Pillow Book  ( Makura no Soshi- ) and by Murasaki Shikibu, in her diary( both from the Heian Period).

Because of  the fact that the chrysanthemum was so prestigious, with its Chinese lineage and its supposed purifying and life extending powers  ( besides the beauty of the flower itself ! ) many of Japans noble families, from the Heian Period on, adopted it in one form or another into their family crests or onto their kimonos or furniture.

However, what makes the chrysanthemum especially symbolic of the Imperial Family of Japan, is the fact that the large round , yellow blossoms are reminiscent of THE SUN- the ancestor, according to Japanese mythology, in the form of AMATERASU, of the all Japanese Emperors.